Asimov’s Future History Volume 15 Read online

  “Your planet, I mean.”

  “Planets are in the sky. I was of the earth.”

  “I mean–oh, never mind.” He spoke soundlessly to the woman, Sybyl–” Of the ground? Farmers? Could even prehistoricals be so ignorant?”–apparently thinking she could not read lips, a trick she had mastered to divine the deliberations of churchly tribunals.

  Joan said, “I know what is sufficient to my charge.”

  Boker frowned, then rushed on. “Please, hear me out. Our cause is just. The fate of the sacred depends upon our winning to our side many converts. If we are to uphold the vessel of humanity, and time-honored traditions of our very identity, we must defeat Secular Skepticism.”

  She tried to turn away, but the clanking weight of her chains stopped her. “Leave me alone. Although I killed no one, I fought in many combats to assure the victory of France’s Great True King. I presided over his coronation at Rheims. I was wounded in battle for his sake.”

  She held up her wrists–for she was now in the foul cell at Rouen, in leg irons and chains. Sybyl had said this would anchor her, be good for her character in some way. As an angel, Sybyl was no doubt correct. Boker began to implore her, but Joan summoned strength to say, “The world knows how I was requited for my pains. I shall wage war no more.”

  Monsieur Boker turned to the sorceress. “A sacrilege, to keep a great figure in chains. Can’t you transport her to some place of theological rest? A cathedral?”

  “Context. Sims need context,” La Sorcière said without sound. Joan found she could read lips with a clarity she had never known. Perhaps this Purgatory improved its charges.

  Monsieur Boker clucked. “I am impressed with what you’ve done, but unless you can make her cooperate, what good is she to us?”

  “You haven’t seen her at the summit of her Selfhood. The few historical associations we have been able to decipher claim that she was a ‘mesmerizing presence.’ We’ll have to bring that out.”

  “Can you not make her smaller? It’s impossible to talk to a giant.”

  The Maid, to her astonishment, shrank by two-thirds in height.

  Monsieur Boker seemed pleased. “Great Joan, you misunderstand the nature of the war that lies ahead. Uncountable millennia have passed since your ascension into heaven. You–”

  The Maid sat up. “Tell me one thing. Is the king of France a descendant of the English Henry’s House of Lancaster? Or is he a Valois, descended from the Great and True King Charles?”

  Monsieur Boker blinked and thought. “I... I think it may be truly said that we Preservers of Our Father’s Faith, the party I represent, are in a manner of speaking descendants of your Charles.”

  The Maid smiled. She knew her voices had been heaven-sent, no matter what the bishops said. She’d only denied them when they took her to the cemetery of St. Ouen, and then only for fear of the fire. She’d been right to recant her recantation two days later; the Lancastrian failure to annex France confirmed that. If Monsieur Boker spoke for descendants of the House of Valois, despite his clear absence of a noble title, she would hear him out.

  “Proceed,” she said.

  Monsieur Boker explained that this place was soon to hold a referendum. (After some deliberation with la Sorcière, he advised that Joan should think of this place as France, in essence.) The contest would be between two major parties, Preservers vs. Skeptics. Both parties had agreed to hold a Great Debate between two verbal duelists, to frame the salient question.

  “What issue?” the Maid asked sharply.

  “Whether mechanical beings endowed with artificial intelligence should be built. And if so, should they be allowed full citizenship, with all attendant rights.”

  The Maid shrugged. “A joke? Only aristocrats and noblemen have rights.”

  “Not anymore, though of course we do have a class system. Now the common lot enjoy rights.”

  “Peasants like me?” the Maid asked. “We?”

  Monsieur Boker, face a moving flurry of exasperated scowls, turned to La Sorcière. “Must I do everything?”

  “You wanted her as is,” La Sorcière said. “Or, rather, as was.”

  Monsieur Boker spent two minutes ranting about something he called the Conceptual Shift. This term meant an apparently theological dispute about the nature of mechanical artifice. To Joan the answer seemed clear, but then, she was a woman of the fields, not a word artisan.

  “Why don’t you ask your king? One of his counselors? Or one of your learned men?”

  Monsieur Boker curled his lip, dismissively fanned the air. “Our leaders are pallid! Weak! Rational doormats!”

  “Surely–”

  “You cannot imagine, coming from ancient passion. Intensity and passion are regarded as bad form, out of style. We wished to find intellects with the old fire, the–”

  “No! Oh!” The flames, licking–

  It was some moments before her breathing calmed and she could shakily listen again.

  The great debate between Faith and Reason would be held in the Coliseum of Junin Sector before an audience of 400,000 souls. The Maid and her opponent would appear in holograms, magnified by a factor of thirty. Each citizen would then vote on the question.

  “Vote?” the Maid inquired.

  “You wanted her uncorrupted,” La Sorcière said. “You got her.”

  The Maid listened in silence, forced to absorb millennia in minutes. When Monsieur Boker finished, she said, “I excelled in battle, if only for a brief time, but never in argument. No doubt you know of my fate.”

  Monsieur Boker looked pained. “The vagueries of the ancients! We have a skimpy historical frame around your, ah, representation–no more. We know not what place you lived, but we do know minutiae of events after your–”

  “Death. You can speak of it. I am accustomed to it, as any Christian maiden should be, upon arrival in Purgatory. I know who you two are, as well.”

  La Sorcière asked cautiously, “You... do?”

  “Angels! You manifest yourselves as ordinary folk, to calm my fears. Then you set me a task. Even if it involves the roguish, it is a divine mission.”

  Monsieur Boker nodded slowly, glancing at La Sorcière. “From the tatters of data flapping about your Self, we gather that your reputation was restored at hearings held twenty-six years after your death. Those involved in your condemnation repented of their mistake. You were called, in high esteem, La Rose de la wire.”

  She blinked back wistful tears. “Justice... Had I been skilled in argument, I’d have convinced my inquisitors–those English-loving preachers of the University of Paris!–that I am not a witch.”

  Monsieur Boker seemed moved. “Even pre-antiquity knew when a holy power was with them.”

  The Maid laughed, lighthearted. “The Lord’s on the side of His Son, and the saints and martyrs, too. But that does not mean they escape failure and death.”

  “She’s right,” La Sorcière said. “Even worlds and galaxies share man’s fate.”

  “We of spirituality need you,” Monsieur Boker pleaded. “We have become too much like our machines. We hold nothing sacred except the smooth functioning of our parts. We know you will address the question with intensity, yet in simplicity and truth. That is all we ask.”

  The Maid felt fatigued. She needed solitude, time to reflect. “I must consult with my voices. Will there be only one, or many questions that I must address?”

  “Just one.”

  The inquisitors had been far more demanding. They asked many questions, dozens, sometimes the same ones, over and over again. Right answers at Poitiers proved wrong elsewhere. Deprived of food, drink, rest, intimidated by the enforced journey to the cemetery, exhausted by the tedious sermon they compelled her to hear, and wracked by terror of the fire, she could not withstand their interrogation.

  “Does the Archangel Michael have long hair?”

  “Is St. Margaret stout or lean?”

  “Are St. Catherine’s eyes brown or blue?”

 
They trapped her into assigning to voices of the spirit attributions of the flesh. Then they perversely condemned her for confounding sacred spirit with corrupt flesh.

  All had been miasma. And in Purgatory, worse trials could ensue. She could not therefore be certain if this Boker would turn out to be friend or foe.

  “What is it?” she wanted to know. “This single question you want me to answer.”

  “There is universal consensus that man-made intelligences have a kind of brain. The question we want you to answer is whether they have a soul.”

  “Only the Almighty has the power to create a soul.”

  Monsieur Boker smiled. “We Preservers couldn’t agree with you more. Artificial intelligences, unlike us, their creators, have no soul. They’re just machines. Mechanical contrivances with electronically programmed brains. Only man has a soul.”

  “If you already know the answer to the question, why do you need me?”

  “To persuade! First the undecided of Junin Sector, then Trantor, then the Empire!”

  The Maid reflected. Her inquisitors had known the answers to the questions they plied her with, too. Monsieur Boker seemed sincere, but then so were those who pronounced her a witch. Monsieur Boker had told her the answer beforehand, one with which any sensible person would agree. Still, she could not be sure of his intentions. Not even the crucifix she asked the priest to hold aloft was proof against the oily smoke, the biting flames....

  “Well?” asked Monsieur Boker. “Will the Sacred Rose consent to be our champion?”

  “These people I must convince. Are they, too, descendants of Charles, the Great and True King, of the House of Valois?”

  5.

  When Marq strode into Splashes & Sniffs to meet his buddy and coworker Nim, he was surprised to find Nim already there. To judge from Nim’s dilated pupils, he’d been there most of the afternoon.

  Marq said, “Hitting it hard? Something going on?”

  Nim shook his head. “Same old Marq, blunt as a fist. First, try the Swirlsnort. Doesn’t do a thing for your thirst–in fact, it will dry up your entire head–but you won’t care.”

  Swirlsnort turned out to be a powdery concoction that tasted like nutmeg and bit as if he had swallowed an angry insect. Marq sniffed it slowly, one nostril at a time. He wanted to be relatively clearheaded when Nim updated him on office politics and funding. After that, he’d allow himself to get skyed.

  “You may not like this,” said Nim. “It concerns Sybyl.”

  “Sybyl!” He laughed a bit uneasily. “How’d you know I–”

  “You told me. Last time we had a snort together, remember?”

  “Oh.” The stuff made him babble. Worse, it made him forget he had.

  “Not exactly a state secret.” Nim grinned.

  “That obvious?” He wanted to be certain Nim, who switched women as often as he changed his underwear, had no designs on Sybyl of his own. “What about her?”

  “Well, there’s a lot of juice waiting for whoever wins the big one at the coliseum.”

  “No problem,” Marq said. “Me.”

  Nim ran his hand through his strawberry blond hair. “I can’t decide if it’s your modesty or your ability to foresee the future that I like most about you. Your modesty. Must be that.”

  Marq shrugged. “She’s good, I’ll admit.”

  “But you’re better.”

  “I’m luckier. They gave me Reason. Sybyl’s stuck with Faith.”

  Nim gave him a bemused glance and inhaled deeply. “I wouldn’t underestimate Faith if I were you. It’s hooked to passion, and no one’s managed to get rid of either, yet.”

  “Don’t have to. Passions eventually burn out.”

  “But the light of reason burns eternally?”

  “If you regenerate brain cells, yes.”

  Nim looked through his straw to see if anything was left and winked at Marq. “Then you don’t need a little advice.”

  “What advice? I didn’t hear any advice.”

  Nim clucked. “If your unregenerated brain cells contain a shred of common sense, you’ll stop cooperating with Sybyl to improve her simulation. Or better yet, you’ll keep pretending you’re cooperating, so you get the benefit of anything she can show you. But what you’ll really start doing is looking for ways to do both her and her simulation in. People say it’s terrific.”

  “I’ve seen it.”

  “Some of it. Think she shows it all?”

  “We’ve been working every day on–”

  “Truncated sim, is what you see. Nights, she inflates the whole pseudo-psyche.”

  Marq frowned. He knew he was a bit light-headed around her, pheromones doing their job, but he had compensated for that. Hadn’t he? “She wouldn’t...”

  “She might. People upstairs got their eye on her.”

  Marq felt a stab of jealousy in spite of himself, but he was careful not to show it. “Ummm. Thanks.”

  Nim bowed his head with characteristic irony and said, “Even if you don’t need it, you’d be a fool to turn it down.”

  “What, the juice, when I win?”

  “Not the juice, buggo. You think I missed noticing that I’m talking to ambition’s slave? My advice.”

  Marq took a hefty double-nostril snort. “I’ll certainly bear it in mind.”

  “This thing’s going to be big. You think it’s just a job for this Sector, but I tell you, people from all over Trantor will tune into the show.”

  “All the better,” Marq said, though his stomach was feeling like he had suddenly gone into free fall. Living in a real cultural renaissance was risky. Maybe his hollow feeling was the stim, though.

  “I mean, Seldon and that guy who follows him around like a dog, Amaryl–you think they’ve booted this to you because it’s a snap?”

  Marq took a bit of the stim before answering. “No, it’s because I’m the best.”

  “And you’re a long way down from them on the status ladder. You are, my friend, expendable.”

  Marq nodded soberly. “I’ll certainly bear it in mind.”

  Was he repeating himself? Must be the stim.

  Marq did not give Nim’s counsel any thought until two days later. He overheard someone in the executive lounge praising Sybyl’s work to Hastor, the leader of Artifice Associates. He skipped lunch and went back to his floor. As he passed Sybyl’s office on his way back to his own, his intention, he told himself, was to relay the compliment. But when he found her door unlocked, her office empty, an impulse seized him.

  Half an hour later, he jumped slightly when she said “Marq! “from the open doorway. Her hand smoothed her hair in what he took to be unconscious primping, betraying a desire to please. “Can I help you?”

  He’d just finished the software cross-matting to link her office, so that he’d be able to monitor her interviews with her client, Boker. She shared with Marq the substance of these interviews, as far as he knew.

  He reasoned that his suggestions as to how she should handle the sometimes difficult Boker would be improved if he were exposed to Boker directly. But that would compromise the client relationship, ordinarily a strict rule. This, though, was special...

  He shrugged. “Just waiting for you.”

  “I’ve gotten her much better structured. Her mood flutters are below zero point two.”

  “Great. Can I see?”

  Did her smile seem warmer than usual? He was still wondering about that when he reached his own office, after an hour of intuning on Joan. Sybyl had certainly done good work. Thorough, intricately matted in with the ancient personality topography.

  All since yesterday? He thought not.

  Time to do a little sniffing around in simspace.

  6.

  Voltaire loomed–brows furrowed, scowling, hands on skinny hips. He rose from the richly embroidered chair in his study at Cirey, the chateau of his long-term mistress, the Marquise du Chatelet.

  The place he had called home for fifteen years depressed him, now that
she was gone. And now the marquis, without the decency to wait until his wife’s body was cold, had informed him that he must leave.

  “Get me out of here!” Voltaire demanded of the scientist who finally answered his call. Scientist–a fresh word, one no doubt derived from the Latin root, to know. But this fellow looked as though he knew little. “I want to go to the cafe. I need to see the Maid.”

  The scientist leaned over the control board Voltaire was already beginning to resent, and smiled with transparent pleasure at his power. “I didn’t think she was your type. You showed a strong preference all your life–remember, I’ve scanned your memories, you have no secrets–for brainy women. Like your niece and the Madame du Chatelet.”

  “So? Who truly can abide the company of stupid women? The only thing that can be said on their behalf is that they can be trusted, as they’re too stupid to practice deceit.”

  “Unlike Madame du Chatelet?”

  Voltaire drummed his fingers impatiently on the beautifully wrought walnut desk–a gift from Madame du Chatelet, he recalled. How had it gotten to this rude place? Could it indeed have been assembled from his memory alone? “True, she betrayed me. She paid dearly for it, too.”

  The scientist arched a brow. “With that young officer, you mean? The one who made her pregnant?”

  “At forty-three, a married woman with three grown children has no business becoming pregnant!”

  “You hit the roof when she told you–understandable but not very enlightened. Yet you didn’t break off with her. You were with her throughout the birth.”

  Voltaire fumed. Memory dark, memory flowing like black waters in a subterranean river. He’d worried himself sick about the birth, which had proved amazingly easy. Yet nine days later, the most extraordinary woman he had ever known was dead. Of childbed fever. No one–not even his niece and housekeeper and former paramour, Madame Denis, who took care of him thereafter–had ever been able to take her place. He had mourned her until, until–he approached the thought, veered away–till he died...

  He puffed out his cheeks and spat back rapidly, “She persuaded me that it would be unreasonable to break with a ‘woman of exceptional breeding and talent’ merely for exercising the same rights that I enjoyed. Especially since I hadn’t made love to her for months. The rights of man, she said, belonged to women, too–provided they were of the aristocracy. I allowed her gentle reasonableness to persuade me.”